Subject: Various and sundry items

04 Oct 2003 03:37

Greetings, everyone. Here is the latest laundry list of items requiring your attention. The list is long, but please do read it all through carefully (I gave up trying to prioritize the items at around 4 this morning).

1. PTO meeting: Given that several interested parties are already coming in this coming Tuesday morning to help with the on-going book-covering project, and given that I am fond of the idea of multi-tasking, I would like to hold a brief “let’s organize” meeting in the RATS/STARS room in the CDI (aka library) at 9h00. Please come if you’d like to actively participate in PTO (and please stay to help finish the book-covering project if you can!). The PTO is the social activities arm of L2M and in times past has really gone a long way to bringing our far-flung families together.

2. Please remind your child that if s/he is in collège and has a class that starts at 8 a.m., s/he needs to wait for the class teacher to come down to the lobby or courtyard to fetch the class. I believe this policy’s purpose is to ensure that kids aren’t wandering all over the school before classes actually start. Anyway, please let your child know that it isn’t a matter of him/her not knowing where the class is, but rather a school policy that we need to respect. If the teacher does not show up, your child needs to go to Perm and wait there, rather than hanging out in the hallway in front of the classroom. Thanks for your help with this!

3. Please be sure to use the “carnet de correspondance” to deal with tardiness, leaving school early, and absences. Don’t worry about writing anything in French (although knowing the word “malade”—”sick”—is useful!). Your child should bring the carnet to the vie scolaire office for Mr Dourequin (college) or Mr Pruneau (lycee) or the monitors to deal with. If your child is absent, please also call the monitors’ office (I believe the number is 04.38.12.25.77) before 9h30. There are at least two people in that office who speak adequate English. You need to tell them your child’s name and class (6eme2, 5eme1, etc.).

4. This coming week features several “Rencontres Parents-Professeurs”—teaching team information nights. Please note that parking will be, as ever, practically non-existent near the school; your best bet is to park in the underground lot at the train station, so add about 10-15 minutes to your timing. The schedule is attached; please take particular note that the part between 17 and 17h30 will cover what L2M teachers are doing. (Some but not all L2M teachers will be there on any given night, but I will have asked those not in attendance to provide me with course summaries to share with you.) The part between 17h30 and 19h00 will give you a chance to meet the French-side teachers and learn what your child will be covering this year. Translation will be provided.

5. For parents of girls: If your daughter is caught without certain supplies at a particular time of the month, she should see the nurse. In the event that the nurse is not there or does not have the necessary supplies on hand, or if your daughter does not yet have the capacity to ask for something for “les règles,” (or is too embarrassed to try to deal with it), AND if her friends cannot help her out, I have a small supply here in the L2M office.

6. “Stage d’observation”: 9th-grade students will have the chance to participate in a week-long “observing internship” the week before the Christmas break. The catch is that the students have to set up the internships themselves. Generally, they need to find a company or enterprise that is willing to have them come in for the week, watch things being done, ask questions, and then afterwards write up a report. Usually the kids go to wherever their parents work, but they can also ask, say, a local tradesperson (baker, butcher, hairdresser, etc.) if their French is good enough (and virtually all of our 9th-graders have sufficient French so as not to confine themselves to English-only enterprises). I will send you the details as soon as Madame Laverte (the collège principal) sends them on to me (sometime next week), but I wanted to give you a heads-up so your child can be thinking about participating.

7. Sometime early next week we will have a new student who will likely be in our 2nde2 class. A warm welcome to N’quobile (nickname “Niki”—and thank goodness, because that apostrophe is an unpronounceable—at least for me—click sound!) Siyabonga from Tanzania, coming most recently from a boarding school in South Africa.

8. Mrs. Lindt will be on sick leave for the next week. I have arranged for Mrs Leclerc and Mrs McDougal to cover some of the classes, and I will cover some others. We will not be able to cover everything, however, so her 2nde and Terminale classes will likely be getting 3 out of 4 hours (4eme will get its usual allotment of 3 hours/week). The SAT prep class will be on as usual, but comparative literature will have to wait for Mrs Lindt’s return. The ESL class will meet only on Monday.

NOTE to 4eme CLASS: For this week only, Thursday English will be held at 8 am rather than 9 am. Sorry about the earlier time, but it’s the only way that it fits into the substituting teacher’s schedule for that morning.

9. *Reminder*: PSAT signups end on Oct. 10 for the test on Saturday, Oct. 18. Pretty much everyone in 2nde should sign up, and anyone in 1ere who hasn’t taken it should do so as well. American kids from the British section have been invited to participate. Please don’t wait until the last minute to let me know your child will be taking this test.

10. Some of you have inquired about the school choirs. I will try to get you the specifics of when which group is meeting where (yes, I wrote that sentence, said the English teacher). I do know that there will be three concerts during this school year. More details to follow.

Bon weekend tout le monde,

Olivia Kallner

Subject: L2M update (think “zen”)

Mon, 15 Sep 2003 16:07:06

Greetings, parents:

It’s my aim to try to communicate with you all on a more-or-less weekly basis to keep you informed about where we are, what's happening in the school at large, and so on.

Before I get to the heart of today’s missive, a couple of time-dependent announcements:

1. Mrs McDougal will be in the CDI (library, up one floor from the LCI main entrance) covering books tomorrow (Tues) from 9 to 12 and on Thursday from 11 to 13h15. Anyone with a little time to spare is cordially and strongly urged to come help. 

2. There will be a “rencontre parents-professeurs” (parent-teacher meeting) night on Monday, 22 Sept, for parents with children in 6th and 10th  grades. Please note that this meeting is *not* designed for you to discuss your child’s progress with his/her teacher, but is rather an informational meeting wherein you will find out what topics are being covered in your child’s classes. Parent-teacher *conferences* will be held (I think) in mid-October. Meetings for the other grades will be held Oct 6-9; I will send you an update later on.

****

As for the main event, first, my thanks for your patience. La rentrée (back to school) is a hectic time at best, and add to that my inexperience and unfamiliarity with various rules, etc., ...well, let’s just say I’ve learned a lot. One rule that changed between the end of last term and the beginning of this term is that non-francophone students are no longer allowed to participate in core French classes (such as math, French, French history-geography) until such time as they don’t need in-class translation (roughly sometime a bit beyond the initial level of FLE II). 

What this means is that all of a sudden the majority of our 7th-grade and 6th-grade students were no longer going to be in any math class at all—a situation which no one would be happy with (least of all our U.S. accreditation board). I am happy to say that with the approval of the L2M board, we are hiring Mr Tom Craigie to take on 6-7 hours of math teaching. (Mr Craigie covered for Mrs Parker during her illness last year.)

In addition, we will be consolidating our two physics courses and using the time to provide more math instruction for college-age students. Thus we will be offering for college 4 hours each of 6th grade (6th-grade) math, 7th grade (7th-grade) math (pre-algebra), algebra I, and geometry. Algebra II, pre-calculus and calculus are this year’s high school offerings.

Parents of fully bilingual children, please note!! If your child is in 9th grade (3ème) or is otherwise going to take the brevet exam this year, he or she will *not* be included in the English-language math class unless you specifically request it. I strongly discourage adding these additional hours to his/her schedule, given the huge amount of work preparing for the brevet requires. Similarly, franco-american children will not take English-language math unless specifically requested or unless it is known that your family will be going/returning to the U.S. in the relatively near future. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact me directly.

Finally, bringing in Mr Craigie means that, apart from adding hours to most of our students’ schedules (sigh), their emplois du temps (schedules) themselves will be changing somewhat in order to accommodate the shifting of various teachers’ hours. Barring unforeseen delays in the hiring process, I will have your children’s new schedules waiting for them on Monday, Sept 22. Most Monday start times will remain the same. A few classes will end a bit later, and I apologize in advance for this. Believe me, having spent this entire past weekend puzzling through how to accommodate everyone, any inconveniences will not be there for lack of trying.

My best to you all,

Olivia Kallner, Head of School

PS: The meeting with your child’s team teachers will be conducted nearly 100% in French. It is still worthwhile to come even if you’re not particularly fluent (or fluent at all), in that the teachers frequently distribute handouts that can be deciphered at your leisure later on. Usually the team teachers are willing to talk afterwards in however much English is at their command (which is sometimes considerable). I imagine that I will be on hand and will try to translate, as will other more-or-less bilingual parents from our section and the British section.

Letter: Being the director

Tue, 9 Sep 2003 01:19:18 

Eric, my child (and Emma, to whom I will copy this):

I have two moments before I will go back to bed to try to get more rest before facing the day.

Being the director is... indescribable. I've been working 12-15 hours a day or more since Aug 25th trying to work out irreconcilable schedules (teachers, students, classes), finding answers to questions I would never have thought to ask, and dealing with the completely, totally inflexible administration. No wonder Mrs L burned out.

Speaking of Mrs L, no, no “lip” thus far, but she (a) doesn’t seem to think she needs to formally prepare for her classes (I am going to ask her students what they think of her after a little more time), (b) hasn’t been particularly helpful in bringing me up to speed on administrative items (Marianne has been far more useful), and (c) gets tears in her eyes every time she talks to me. I can’t tell if it’s self-pity or envy. If it’s the latter, she ought to be institutionalized.

Speaking of Marianne, she has thus far been great to work with. It helps that we like each other (as opposed to the Cold War that existed between her and Mrs L even before the move to Bellecombette, and which escalated significantly last year). It also helps that one of my First Acts at my First Board Meeting was to insist that Marianne get a hefty raise (which theoretically should happen sometime hopefully early next month). Poor creature has been living on a pittance, and I mean a pittance, and this after working for L2M for 5 years. (Yes, there are certain legal/contractual considerations, but the issues should have been dealt with long ago.)

My fundamental problem so far as the job goes is that I am ignorant. I often don’t even know what questions to ask. And while I get along fine with the LCI administration so far (I especially like Mme Laverte), all parties seem to assume that I will know what I’m doing without a helluva lot of input from their end. Oh, you mean I was supposed to have the parents fill out this form that I have now seen myself for the very first time? Oh, you mean that kids in FLE II can’t go to French math without the teachers’ permission? Oh, oh, oh.

Next year will be easier, assuming I survive this one. I am trying to write down the Events of the Day for my novel, Un An dans l’Éducation Nationale.

Such is my life. Your input and commiseration are welcome.

xxoo mom

L2M meeting this Saturday, 10 a.m., Bellecombette

Subject: Meeting for all parents, students, and teachers!

2 September 2003

Dear Parents,

Please come to the school office this Saturday morning at 10h00. There have been significant changes to Lucy Maud Montgomery (L2M) School’s program and policies. In addition, all or most of the families new to Montgomery will be there, and this may be the only convenient time available at the beginning of the year when we can all be together and get to know one another a little bit.

Your L2M students should come with you (and yes, you can bring your other children if you need to). The teachers will be on hand to answer questions and to respond to any concerns or suggestions you may have.

We also need to reconstitute our PTO, given that our principal officers last year, Mesdames Mercier and Rolland, resigned when the LCI (host school) administration refused to allow their children to pursue a French baccalaureate. Please consider becoming an active volunteer — otherwise we may not have a Christmas party! or a Thanksgiving dinner!

I’m looking forward to seeing you on Saturday.

Olivia Kallner

Vice President, Board of Directors, The Lucy Maud Montgomery American School